Magnificent Desolation_ The Long Journey Home From the Moon - Buzz Aldrin [9]
At some point after the Eagle had separated from the Columbia, I should have turned off the rendezvous radar, but I’d chosen not to do so. I hadn’t wanted to eliminate an opportunity to check the rendezvous radar before we actually needed it, so I’d simply left it on. I wanted a safety precaution in case we had to make a quick ascent, hightailing it away from the moon’s surface and back into space to catch up with Mike Collins and the Columbia, our ride back home. As it was, we had no idea that the computers couldn’t handle information from the rendezvous radar and the landing radar at the same time, or process the data quickly enough.
About two weeks prior to our launch, the Apollo 12 astronauts had also been training at the same time as the Apollo 11 crew, since the missions were quite similar. They had experienced the computer alarms in simulation, so they’d aborted the mission. The simulation trainers in Houston and Florida said, “You should not have aborted. It was not that serious.”
Flight Director Gene Kranz was irate. “Go back and study this matter,” he told the Apollo 12 crew. “We don’t want any of these kinds of mistakes in the future.”
Unfortunately, the incident was never reported to Neil, Mike, or me. Whatever had been learned about this alarm, and whether it meant a go or no-go, never made it into our mission preparation. Being the systems guy in the LM, I was very much in the dark when this alarm came up during the tense moments of our powered descent. The lack of communication could have proved deadly.
At Mission Control, as the Eagle zoomed lower at a velocity of 250 feet per second, Gene Kranz called out to Steve Bales, “GUIDO?” (This was the acronym for Steve’s position as Guidance Officer.) “Are you happy?”
Steve Bales knew the computer was still overloaded, but it didn’t appear that the problem was hardware-related. Although he couldn’t be certain to what extent the software glitch might affect the computer twenty-four hours later, when it came time for us to get off the moon’s surface, he had to make a decision now: either go or no-go for landing.
With his eyes glued to his computer screen, Steve called back to Kranz, “Go!”
Charlie Duke passed the word on to us. “Eagle, you’re go for landing.”
We throttled down and continued our descent, closing in rapidly making adjustments to pitch over as we checked our position relative to the surface. Seven and a half minutes in, we were at 16,000 feet. Eight minutes in, 7,000 feet. Nine minutes in, 3,000 feet.
Twenty seconds later, at an altitude of only 2,000 feet, another alarm lit up on the computer display in the LM. Neil and I looked up simultaneously. “Twelve alarm,” he said to Houston. “Twelve-oh-one.”
“Roger,” Charlie acknowledged our concern. “Twelve-oh-one alarm.”
At the Mission Control consoles, the ever calm, crewcut Kranz winced. “GUIDO?”
Steve Bales had only a fraction of a second to make up his mind. “Go,” he said tersely.
“We’re go,” Charlie relayed the decision to us. “Hang tight. We’re go.”
At about 1,000 feet above the surface, Neil began a visual search, looking for a good spot to land. “That’s not a bad looking area … Okay. One thousand at thirty is good.”
Charlie Duke replied, “Eagle, looking great. You’re go.” He must have seen the same thing we did, another alarm, because there was a pause in Charlie’s strained voice. Then, “Roger. Twelve-oh-two. We copy it.”
While Neil was looking out the window, my gaze was glued to the instrument readings in front of me. With the dropouts in communication, and the dropouts in radar information owing to the computer glitches, it was even more vital that Neil receive accurate altimeter readings. Moreover, our fuel level was becoming a concern. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the read-outs for more than a fraction of a second.
Neil was still scanning the surface as we headed to our designated landing site, and he was not happy with what he saw.
“Seven-fifty